Top of the Lake
by DragonsDeadAndDancing
Summary: When a couple buys the Dragonborn's house, they buy horrors and nightmares as well... Hearthfire. Lakeview Manor. Lake Ilinalta.
1. Chapter 1

**I know. I have 2 stories waiting to be continued. Blame the snow. Winter depressions. Whatever. Something doesn't feel right at the moment.**

**The couple has neither names nor races because I don't know. I didn't want to invent a new backstory. Maybe I'll rewrite it later.**

"**Top of the lake" or something similar is the title of a TV-show. I've just seen ads, but they were strange. And the rest belongs to Bethesda.**

**Enjoy.**

The Redguard was waiting for the couple to arrive. "Welcome, welcome", she said, using her cane as support. "Welcome to Lakeview Manor!"

Like the old woman, the home of the legendary Dragonborn had clearly seen better days before. The garden was overgrown with Trama-roots and Snowberry bushes, the stable's roof was carved in and the walls needed a lot of fresh paint. Hawks and some other kind of bird were nesting on the roof, which was white from their droppings.

"Welcome. I am Rayya, steward of the late Dovahkiin."

The man greeted her and introduced him and his wife. "Are you sure that you want to sell this estate?", he asked.

The steward sighed. "Yes. Our master has been dead for thirty years, and Gunjar and I are no longer able to look after the house. In truth", she sighed again, "I think I have waited too long. But let's look at it first."

They entered the house and were greeted by dust, cobwebs and the faint smell of skeever droppings. "As you can see", Rayya said, "there is an antechamber before the main hall." Some moth-eaten sabre cat heads were mounted on the walls and glared at the intruders angrily, teeth bared at them in an eternal growl. The shelves held nothing but dust.

"The main hall has two floors and a cellar, all of it furnished. Upstairs are two bedrooms, one for children and one for a couple. There are three additions; the library tower to the east and the alchemy tower to the north are accessible from ground and first floor, the left-wing greenhouse only from the ground level."

Some of the furniture was broken, but most of it seemed still useful. More heads (bear, sabre cat, wolf, deer), mud crabs and even a slaughterfish decorated the walls. The shelves and chests were already empty; the carriage outside was loaded with Rayya's and Gunjar's possessions. The greenhouse was in a terrible state: More Trama-root and jazbay vines had choked all the other plants and mushrooms.

In the cellar, they found shrines of all nine Divines. The woman scowled at Talos': "I thought the Dragonborn was a supporter of the Empire?"

Rayya seemed uncomfortable. "Because of a personal feud with Ulfric, yes. But for the 'Dragon in the North', it was hard to deny Tiber Septim's powers. And she hardly ever prayed to him. I think it was … respect. Not faith."

When they were finished, the Redguard sat down on a dusty chair. "Forgive me, my bones are old… What do you think?"

"Well", the man answered, choosing his words carefully, "the house seems in a sorry state…"

"It's just some dust and cobwebs. The structure will hold for forty more years."

"How much do you want?", asked the woman.

"Seven thousand. A house in Solitude has thrice the price."

The man looked at his wife and she nodded encouragingly. "Yes. We'll take it."

For the first time, the old steward smiled. "Wonderful! There's just one more issue to settle; in a nearby grove is a cemetery. Gunjar and I…when our time has come, we would like to be buried there. To be with our master and friends."

"Of course." The woman smiled at the Redguard.

The last arrangements were settled, contracts were signed, seven thousand septims got a new owner. Finally Rayya sat next to her old friend Gunjar on the carriage and waved the couple a good-bye.

During the last hours of the day, the woman started to clean the new home, while her husband ordered their possessions to be brought from their small house in Falkreath to Lakeview Manor. Dusk found them on the northern tower, watching the fading light and the lake.

"To our new home!", the made a toast. "To our future!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Read Requiem Grove. It isn't essential for this story, but it doesn't hurt. Explains background and stuff.**

The first night in their new home was peaceful and quiet. No skeevers stirred in the cellar, no owls hooted in the rafters, not even a spider spun a delicate web of beauty and death.

The water of the lake, north of the house, was calm. Its smooth surface held the secrets in a soft, soothing embrace. The dead stayed in their graves and their pained minds were at ease.

One last night of silence. Silence…before the storm.

The couple rose in the morning. After a short breakfast, both continued to clean the house. Their possessions arrived, and the man and the carriage-driver unloaded them while the woman worked in the garden. Somehow, the thick tangle of Trama roots disturbed her more than all the spiders and skeevers combined.

She saw the visitor only by coincidence; had she not looked in the direction of the small grove, she wouldn't have seen the strange woman. Clad in black, hood drawn over her head, she walked out of the cemetery. Like she could feel the woman's gaze, the visitor turned around.

"Oh! I am sorry."

"Who are you?"

"My father was a friend of the Dragonborn. I just wanted to see the hero's grave with my own eyes." Strange eyes. As the visitor came near, the woman could see that her iris was a deep golden. The stranger smiled. "I am truly sorry; I did not want to disturb you. Rayya mentioned something about selling the house in her last letter…"

"My husband and I, we bought it just yesterday."

"Well, then it is bad luck for me but good for you; Lakeview Manor is beautiful."

"Bad luck?"

The visitor smiled again. "I have to…I made a promise, and now I have to talk to Rayya and Gunjar. Do you know where they are living at the moment?"

"Hm…Whiterun, I think."

"Oh, thank you so very much. But I have to go now. A pleasure to meet you."

"Goodbye." Strange woman, she thought. And these eyes…

Her thoughts were interrupted by her husband, who came out of the house. "Should we bring your mother's – is something wrong, my love?"

"What? No, everything's alright. There was just a woman who visited the Dragonborn's grave…"

He chuckled. "Well, I guess that'll happen often. What should we do about your mother's cutlery?"

Like the evening before, the couple shared a bottle of wine on the northern tower as the sun sank lower and lower. The last rays of red sunlight danced over the lake's surface, touched the crumbled ruins of an ancient fort and even reached down to the rotting ship at the bottom.

With a sharp _bang_ the woman's chair fell backwards on the floor as she jumped to her feet. She stared on the water below them.

"What?" The man rose too, worried about his spouse.

She blinked. "Oh. It's gone."

"What?", he asked again, with more force.

"I thought I had seen something…someone…"

"It has been a long day. We ought to go to bed."

"You are probably right. This damn garden..."


	3. Chapter 3

**Yesss! I finally managed to beat myself to write another chapter! Shorter than I would like it to be, but we are slowly getting to "nightmares and horrors."**

The woman stood in the garden. Above her, the moon shone and its silver light turned the moisture from a quick rain that still lingered on the entwined roots and branches into pure ice.

And like ice the air felt, although it was summer and Falkreath Hold was in the south of Skyrim. The woman felt a strange chill through her thin nightgown. Why had she come down, in the middle of the night, to the hated tangle of plants fighting each other for dominance over this pathetic piece of soil? She didn't know.

Suddenly she heard a sound, soft and quiet, so soft and quiet that she rather felt it than sensed it with her ears. The echo of steps taken long ago, the memory of rustling leaves, the shadow of the ghost of old joy, worn thin by the decades.

The woman turned around. Eyes, filled with sorrow, met her gaze and a voice, barely audible, whispered a single word…

…and she woke up, panting, a scream escaping her lips.

Her husband jerked and raised, eyes wide and searching for danger, but he found only darkness. "What's wrong?", he asked.

"I…I was down in the garden…and somebody was there…"

The man groaned. "You just had a nightmare, my love. Try to get some sleep again."

"Yes…"

But when she rose in the morning, the woman felt like she hadn't slept at all. She barely managed to open her eyes and her answers to her husband's questions were curt and sharp like daggers. They broke their fast in silence, then went to their tasks.

The man brought the furniture in the first floor and on the tops of the small towers. As he brushed the dust from old shelves and hanged some pictures on the walls, he worried about his wife. Something about the new house clearly disturbed her. But they would be finished soon and then everything would settle.

He carefully unwrapped the thick layers of leather around Rythe Lythandas' _Sunrise over Kvatch_ when he suddenly heard a scream from outside. The man dropped the painting and ran downstairs.

The woman had been working in the garden, but now she stared at a small piece of soil which she had been liberating from plants.

A skull was staring back.

Her husband stopped at the sight. "I didn't know they had a dog", he said, trying to act normal. "Maybe the children buried it here." He dropped in a crouch and looked at the skeleton, which was half covered with earth. Still, the bones were clearly an animal's. Pretty big for a hound, but the war-dogs in Skyrim often were the size of a goat or a wolf.

He stood up and turned to his shocked wife. "No need to worry. The animal is long dead. Why don't you take a break for the rest of the day and I'll take care of this?"

The man embraced her and she nodded, eyes closed. "If it's okay for you…"

"Sure. Rest, darling."

After a light meal, the woman went to bed and her husband dug the dog's skeleton from the garden. He decided that the hound ought to stay with its master, filled the bones in a wooden box and walked, shovel in the hand, to the small graveyard in the grove.

It felt wrong here. Last time they had been there, it had been a sad but bright place, full of blossoming plants. Now a shadow seemed to cover the cemetery. Everything looked paler and…fading, worn-out, like something vital had been removed. The flowers hid their colourful blossoms and the former brilliant white stones were rather grey and dull.

The man quickly abandoned this thought. His wife's worries were afflicting him too, obviously. Instead of wondering about darkness and shadows, he dug a small, deep hole, placed the box in it and put the earth back in its place. He finished his work by covering the grave with a few stones.

Back to work! The woman was probably still sleeping inside, so her husband started to repair the old stable. It had enough room for two horses and there were signs for an old addition that had been begun but never finished. For its age, the building was still quite intact. Only a part of the roof had collapsed, but the man was able to fix it until dusk.

His wife had recovered and cooked a soup for him. As on the days before, they shared a bottle of wine on a tower – the western this time, for the man didn't want any more problems on this day.

The forest they were watching was filled with absolute silence.


End file.
